Metamorphopsia

by Norma Cole

Poetry. "The words here, in their angular and exploratory relations, their displacements, as if composing thought. Or as if recomposing the world - picturing it from its missing parts. Once we might have sworn we'd met these words before. This extraordinary gathering proves otherwise"-Michael Palmer.Poetry. " Norma Cole's writing is thoughts, poems, and 'letters' with an open-ended quality. Lit is in process, without endings: Method will find the right name for this 'brightness in the air'" -Leslie Scalapino.

99 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Norma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her most recent books of poetry include Fate News, Actualities, Where Shadows Will, and Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. Her translations from French include Danielle Collobert’s It Then, the anthology Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, and Jean Daive’s White Decimal. Cole lives and works in San Francisco.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metamorphopsia is divided into five parts: "Metamorphopsia", "Paper House", "Itinerary's Control", "Letters of Discipline", and "The Provinces"...

from "Paper House"...

b


off the wall I lie in bed
vegetation overhead
I should have made a mistake
all tucked up in song
if I be a wall or door
draw me like a cedar board

*

e


a secret hill always dear
separated from the last horizon
endless setting in fingers separated a little
wind, seasonal vocal comparison
comes in, pulls a person's hair out
ducks a person in the sea

*

f


stop motion hands hot country

a lesser noise divulged between the poles

"Silvia do you remember the weather when you were alive"

so youth gets up draws a light study gives the ears the
better portion

concern won't change its colour, against the snow a high-powered
beauty - indivisible like the hidden measure we don't talk about

*

g


all the years of work have resulted in a complete dismantling
two birds, one fox, some anger
disentangled
notes back into the water
is its
own misreading
what they notice
gelatin filled up with behavior
starving discoloured things
that is, faces made not to last
of course in time suppression weakens structure from within

*

i


an original event does double spontaneity, lies in small steps
to dissimilarity, doubtful things, hinges misfitting the inscription
numbered sets the opposite of numb to feel the sentence

*

j


who edits for drawing
is a burden
and cannot tell
which is which

*

l


writing burn my tongue
reading a book
or feeding the fire
developing old pictures
released the image
you really ought to see
Ste Refrigerator
cried real tears

*

o


rekindling
things are constant
recopied from books
found in them

*

q


today the end of the frame
"some time," "some place"
call it paper rose
call it birdland

*

s


every time we . . .
heartily embrace the text
encircle it
shoulder it
shake it loose
if . . . should

*

u


partials lit up by the startle reflex
the round art moves strengthens forms
rules the second house where harmony applies

*

v


to liken to be lost
"pain" becomes "foot"
but the skin
leaving a cause
to experience another
an influence leaves off

*

x


days go by in full
or more natural time
the way bridge is
designation of thought
and thing
cherished, nothing

from "Itinerary's Control"...

FORMS OF THE VERB TO MAKE ALMOST ALWAYS INCLUDE THE EYE
for instance the bird is watching the eye of the eye is looking
at the bird
precense of the eye in the text is witness to having done
the other is the stolen eye remembered
the eye is often in the hand
or is provided with a hand
which might introduce light, a double chandelier
permanent, ephemeral, the eye is what touches things

collusion: to doubt is to touch
so the hand supports the eye
being an eye the hand can penetrate line or skin
surface or space
being in the eye
tending towards vision

use: let it be a drawing
being careful
a world without colour
sense is opposed to the literal sense hidden in it
figure is description of world with portrait in it
first geometry then portrait

number, space, motion, gift
custom is our nature
by nature so different
numbers imitate space
experience study

*

ATTRIBUTE A THEORY OF DIRECT AND DISCONTINUOUS ACTION
to actions of place without volume
the children have gone with the driver or piper
into the daily less flat thoroughly walked
unable to isolate matter from its phenomena
discontinuity jumps even out of time
increasingly articulate that matter in flight
consider the notion of ether
struck by its character of artifice
by definition limitless, a continuum
these are its properties, it surrounds us
we're surrounded by absence of mass
it has not been permitted mass
bu continuity having been denied matter
they're even

*

THE SKY IS BUSY WRITING WRENCHING
night and left is not enough
which world is this-
busy sky
animals walking by

Let nothing go unsaid
slashed did not go unsaid
although the music is intermittent
wrists must be named
daughter and son
(they married young)

The sky is burning
writing wrenching night
and left is not enough
which world is this -
burning sky

*

MARGINAL COVERED GRANITE BACK TO MAINTENANCE
little to front water without depth
single anthem long and bitter
history come from cultivation
lightning hit the cross of dust nearby
terraced surface of roads palm divided song elided
salt notes orange of algebra
objects remote out of itinerary's control
water horizon rockbed specific to time as to place
first sight second sight does ego pictor hold the tone
full stop like being sung to
and after a time the landscape stamped permanently on her
never to think of it again

*

TIME IS SLEEPING IN THAT WHITE STONE SENTINEL
dark content
and come back
shakes shadows value
words inconclusion
white amidst the other
simple present

*

ROSE EYES


"And I as metteur en scène am inferior . . .
realizing as I go to fold this letter that (they)
absent in the beginning are present in the end
having without my mentioning it returned while I wrote
pleased, dotted with confetti."


ether having been formed in the image of matter
commas to reconcile the irreconcilable
fire keeps matter in volume, something displaced, something unresolved

rose eyes leaf countless music stem centre
breathed full dream or weeping
bend to moving sleeping

"swiftly as waters flow down the Rhône" nothing this foam turns
undesignated distance universe drowns sails cutting winter's thunder
"what price" solitude's white priceless considered canvas

*

rose eyes muscle some laziness work rests
silence's rock called iron gate
that music holds up

almanac of illusion
not from as you said
looking at the moon

meaning squared
blows stars off course
fort de l'est

rose eyes minus music
meet resistance muscle covers

*

REJECTS FROM VINCENNES (DFA)

operant and cooperant ironed to ice I plead your case to dust

meet the hand that burns

notes in another hand: these notes are in the hand reflection
toward reading

an excellent soup I will not repeat this qualification the soup
must always be excellent

regarding the deception of numbers

bu the heart spoils, nature turns . . .

so long kept naked in danger of being entered robbed the dampness
will cause the contents of the lower room to spoil most becoming
to my state send complete or not at all this language found at the
bottom of the stair to disavow for the last time listen I repeat

a new number placed in the blank does it mean a number if it does
mean something write it in white if it does mean something put in
the blank space that I'm brilliant if not that I'm crazy I won't
let on that I know but will act crazy as usual

never forget you have longer to spend living I know it's been decided
a number at the head of a letter I've decided to sign nothing do
everything sleep on the floor stone and enclosed a date mouth is
all I can say look you transposition fucking illusion universe entire
isn't delicious were the styles improved everything would be improved
something giving what we do not have but we do not hold to that
fanciful little lesson

from "Letters of Discipline"...

1

Skeptical, movement plays there\
apparitions grow, are absent

You can't be outside this absence, the unreality
of all the figures talking or that narrative touches

Outside, you are talked in

The book is left, its own impossibility (tendency)

The common I resist, thickness of space, incomplete
taken one by one, playing in between

Signalling another difference, reassembled, available
"stranger to its live self"

No figure in itself, in its original strangeness
sojourner become inhabitant

*

II

Considerable dust, sun

Method will find the right name for this

"brightness in the air"

The system is our guide, nothing out there

Trading this name for other numbers

Never without economy, exhaustive

*

III

Lighthouse, gate, glass blown in the face

Considerable dust, sun

The system was a brightness in the air, nothing out there

Trading in this name for knowing economy

The captive's heart torn from the chest, new fire kindled
by a silky word in the cavity determining the speed

But, she said, the name is time and we can only count

In costly groups that fall from the ledger of unhappening
forgetting the stream that rolls from nowhere

*

IV

Strict

Whiteness of the jaw
good, better, best

And so forth
explanations, streets

Leave the fingers, the ear

Take the rest

*

V

Flowers and animals find people ugly

That's not all

That's not all

The tree is bent

"Melted" in acid

Many letters

Or no letters

Nature takes care of herself

Trees remind one of cities
"our amazing cities"

Useful, not a belief

*

IX

Intercalated, pearl handled

I'm an egoist and I use you

Excuse you for worrisome progression at pains to recover
the heady discomfort

Its happening incline, febulous

Misspent behest, one on behalf of the other

Come into the kitchen

*

X

A fortune in coffee cups

Meteorite
In distress

Weeping

Something about the garden

. . . made a mess of it

Lighten up

Here's a guide to your teeth

*

Xi

If there's no time

Then it must be drifting

Honest lodging in space

History without substance

Kiss France for me

Me for her

*

XII

As for poison worth knowing

Passing back through work

Painters who think away

Dark fit matching shades of seeing

Scare them or wound them

Their fingers fall out

Twice-crossed front underlined in chalk

Their twisted foot

from "The Provinces"...

IN SHADOW a wall near me in time
some words at first like sound quality
three lines for one star
two stones two lines each
voice falls, tables

alphabet, overrides that accuracy "it is"
is that landscape now bright with strange light
with conditions of its own

a hill there was and on that hill
behind memory likeness of visible things
limping one of them is always falling back
terror left when nature left - a double death

a child in the grass scribbled awake
crawling around eating clover
cheeks afire shrouded in silver
dangerous grey lighter than pewter
less to yellow than silver
less to blue than to silver

*

proximity to that smaller scar
as encounter would
want every little increment
disturbance is a torch
the scathing by speaking
in a different place
the living daylight would know

devastation hits like mimicry
the formal envelope
for the image of night
has one way in
distance calculated from the door
cutting up existing complication

To say was not enough
the fear standing as grafters and sifters
stretching and bending cooling and redoubling
living on bridged without houses

*

shadow figures on cereal boxes
don't forget the empty pot coincidence
or jar translation "I don't care"
hampered by the light

Bridge without replacement
lanterns set up
for severance affirms
comparisons move as sails

[cristiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

still reading...ive been reading some great canadian poets as of late...kevin davies, donato mancini, and now norma cole...

so far, clean, crisp...velocity comes into mind...a demanding speed that's neatly dealt with in two-column poems (at least the first part). not quite language school, not quite new york school, which somehow opens the book up to me.